AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

While the forerunners and later derivative groups of what is now ISIS,
or IS as they now prefer to call themselves, were busy fighting Israel’s enemy
in Syria, Israel and the US together with their Western allies were content to
let the al-Assad regime forces and the Islamists slug it out between them. Both
sides remain, however, the enemy of Israel. But, as the civil war in Syria
progressed, so the various Islamist forces ranged against al-Assad began to coalesce.
Though still not quite fully united, the group that now calls itself the
Islamic State has emerged by far the most influential. It has grown almost exponentially
over the last twelve months or so and has now spread itself into Iraq where it
has become a regional threat as it continues to collect more and more fighters
both locally and from overseas.

But its growth has now reached a tipping point. Not only is it a threat
to the already unstable politics of Iraq as the movement expands eastward out
of Syria into Iraq, but it has now also become a threat to Israel as Israel and
its Western allies begin to realise that IS hasn’t taken its eye off the ball
in western Syria where it borders with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

So far the Islamists that have flocked to the so-called ‘Islamic State’
forces have been busy consolidating their forces in the territories they now
occupy where they are using local recruits to slowly expand holdings in order
to build and establish their ‘caliphate’.

However, in western Syria the IS are now also beginning to become
influential and the Israeli fear of having them on their border has startled
the Israeli government and, just to assure IS that Israel is still a potent
force, Israeli yesterday demonstrated its potency by shooting down a Syrian jet
strike aircraft when it strayed over the border into Golan Heights airspace on
the very same day that the US and their allies attacked IS targets in Syria.
With the US attacking IS and Israel demonstrating there is no let up in its
desire to see al-Assad gone, it’s clear that Israel remains intent on not allowing
the polarising of forces fighting each other in Syria to influence its own long
term strategic goals of defeating both the so-called ‘Islamist’ extremists on
one side and al-Assad and his allies Hezbollah and Iran on the other.

It’s also clear that Israel and the US, together with their allies,
have colluded with each other to define a strategy to defeat a direct threat to
Israel without letting it be seen that the West and its allies are taking the
battle to the IS in Syria in order to protect Israel. It could very well be the
reason why Netanyahu called a sudden halt to the onslaught against the Gaza
Strip at a time just when his extreme right-wing partners in his government
were calling for the complete occupation of the Gaza Strip and the destruction
of Hamas.

As the ceasefire in the Gaza was announced almost unilaterally by
Netanyahu there was barely a murmur of protest from the extreme right-wing.
Something clearly had upset Netanyahu’s plans for the Gaza Strip. Could it have
been the growing threat of the IS potentially coming to Israel’s doorstep in
the Golan Heights? It certainly seems that way.

Friday, September 19, 2014

According to this
Guardian reportAbbott has ‘played down the possibility that
Australia’s renewed involvement in Iraq would increase the chance of terror
plots against Australian targets. He said Australia was targeted in Bali in
2002 before any involvement in the previous Iraq war’.

This is utter nonsense. All Abbott is
attempting here is to mimic John Howard’s ridiculous attempt to hoodwink the
Australian people over the reasons for the Bali bombings.

Today’s terror threats – if, indeed, there
really are any – are as a direct result of this government’s plans to send
Australian forces to Islamic lands for the purpose of killing so-called ‘Islamic’
militants. And, while the Bali bombings did happen some six months before
Howard joined the US in invading and destroying Iraq in March 2003, the
bombings occurred because the Indonesian militants that were responsible for
the bombings knew, just like all Australians knew, that, despite all of Howards
worthless denials at the time about not having made a decision about going to
Iraq, that there was never any doubt that he would. Howard
used the Bali bombings for his own political purposes and may even have
manipulated circumstances to have allowed the outrage to occur.

For Abbott to infer that the present threat
level isn’t as a response to Abbott’s plans to enjoin the US in their fight
against so-called ‘Islamist’ militants is downright garbage. And, in light of
the way Howard used the Bali bombings to suit his political agenda, one has to
wonder to what extent threats today in Australia haven’t been contrived to suit
Abbott’s political agenda.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Last month I
suggested that Australian SAS forces were already in Iraq. I suggested this
based on the assertion by an American neoconservative writers indiscreet wording
in an article that said, “Western commandos such as Seal Team Six, Delta Force
and the British and Australian SAS should also expand operations to
carry out the kind of intelligence-driven leadership targeting that was an
important part of the 2007-2008 surge”. The use of the word ‘expand’ and the
tone of the narrative hinted that Australian SAS, together with other Special
Forces, were already deployed to the region.

Today, Mark Kenny, the Sydney Morning Herald’schief
political editor writes: “While a contingent of SAS commandos departed for
the Middle East on Monday, Fairfax Media understands several SAS commandos have
been in the region on standby for weeks.” What ‘standby’ means is anybody’s
guess but I can’t imagine for one moment that they’ve been idle but, regardless
of whatever they have been up to, their presence earlier on and long before any
formal announcements made by Abbott regarding Australia’s involvement in the
region indicates that Abbott had committed Australia to enjoin the US long
before there was any debate on the matter.

Kenny also goes on to write: “Mr Abbott said the fact that the
legitimate government of Iraq had invited Australia to assist in defeating an
insurgent force, made Australia's participation in the air and ground war legal”.
While Abbott concedes there are legal problems associated with operating with
allies inside Syria, he doesn’t rule entirely rule out the possibility saying, “I’m
not ruling some action is Syria but it is not part of the government current
intentions because, as I’ve said quite frequently over the past few days, the
legalities of operations in Syria are quite different from the legalities of
operations in Iraq”. However, when he was telling Australians and the
parliament a few weeks ago that he’d made no decision about Australia becoming
involved in Iraq, it’s obvious that he clearly had already decided what Australia’s
role would be in Iraq. Why, then should he be believed when he says that going
into Syria is not part of the Australian government’s intentions? And can we
not question weather or not Australian SAS forces aren’t already in Syria as
well as Iraq?

Thursday, September 11, 2014

The Dutch Safety Board has released a preliminary report of the shootdown of Malaysian Airline flight
MH17 on 17 July 2014. The report states that the cockpit area of the Boeing 777
airliner was hit with “a large number of high energy objects”. The report does
not identify nor speculate what these objects were. However, a close examination of evidence available on the internet, including
photographs of the wreckage coupled with information from the preliminary
report, all but confirms that the aircraft was shot down by another aircraft
using rapid fire machine cannon of some 30mm calibre. This contradicts earlier speculation that the aircraft was downed by a
surface to air missile
(SAM).

Some experts who have said the airliner was brought down by a SAM have
pointed out that the BUK anti-aircraft missile system is a radar guided weapon
that can be fitted with a proximity fuse that detonates the warhead as the
missile closes in on its target. While the BUK missile system does indeed have
this capability, it does not account for the uniform size of the round holes
that are shown on the cockpit skin debris which are consistent with 30mm
diameter cannon shells. The BUK system warhead is a conventional fragmentation
high explosive device that would have peppered the target with irregular sized
and jagged holes and not the round holes that can clearly be seen in the films
and photographs of the wreckage.

Some earlier reports suggested that a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su25 may
have been responsible for the shootdown. This scenario was refuted by the
Ukrainian government and its Western allies who argued that the Su25 was
incapable of reaching the 33,000 feet altitude that MH17 was cruising at. Wikipedia’s article on the Su25 states that the service ceiling at best for this aircraft is just
under 23,000 feet. However, the authoritative Military Today website states that the SU25’s service
ceiling is 10kms which, oddly, is almost
33,000 feet. The upshot is that it is well within the realms of reality for the
Su25 to have shot down MH17.

The next consideration is; why was the airliner shot down? It is
generally agreed that, regardless of who was responsible for shooting it down,
it almost certainly was a tragic case of misidentification. Once realised it
was a terrible mistake, every effort was made by whoever did it to cover up
their responsibility with all sides then blaming each other for the deed.

The Ukrainian-Russian separatists who have been widely blamed for the
shootdown certainly have had a recent history of shooting down Ukrainian military aircraft and helicopters but there is no explanation from the Ukrainians or their Western
allies as to why separatists would have shot it down apart from the possibility
that the separatists mistook it for a Ukrainian troop transport. But then why
would the separatists assume that when the aircraft was flying high over the
disputed area of the eastern Ukraine and heading toward Russia. The separatists
would have had no reason to assume it was a Ukrainian aircraft. The Russians
certainly wouldn’t have shot down a civilian aircraft no matter where it was
from. The Ukrainians too would not have shot down any aircraft flying in that
direction and at that height even if they believed it was carrying the Russian
president Vladimir Putin – or at least the Ukrainian government wouldn’t
have attempted to shoot down the Russian president. But what about the Ukrainian
ultra-nationalist neo-Nazis in the military? Would they have unilaterally
attempted it or even committed the crime with an understanding from the
government that they would be disowned and the government’s role in the affair
denied if they were caught out?

The Russians, no matter how much the West is trying to stir things up
against them, would never have left themselves exposed to such a heinous crime.
Nor would the Russian separatists, who have no access to the Ukraine Air Force’s
Su25’s, have any reason to shoot down any aircraft under these particular
circumstances. That leaves only the Ukrainian nationalists. And, since the US
and Europe are their allies, there’s no reason for them to dig too deeply
either.

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Neoconservative propagandist and Israeli apologist, Jonathan
Tobin writing in Commentary yesterday, attempted to justify Israel’s
latest grab of some 400 hectares of West Bank land. Tobin attempts justify the
grab by saying that the land in question is ‘state land’ adjacent to one of Israel’s
earliest settlements in the West Bank which was built after the 1967 war. He
argues that in the event of Palestine being given statehood, the land and the
settlement would become a part of Israel under an arrangement whereby Israel accede
some other lands to Palestine in exchange.

There’s a number of problems with this piece nonsense, not least of
which is the fact that Israel and the ultra right-wing Zionists have no
intention of ever allowing the Palestinians to have a state of their own and
therefore there will never be any kind ‘land swap’.

Tobin goes on to write:

Let’s be clear
about this. Neither the ownership nor the future of Gush Etzion is up for debate
in any peace talks. In every peace plan, whether put forward by Israel’s
government or its left-wing opponents, the bloc remains part of Israel, a
reality that most sensible Palestinians accept.

Tobin and his fellow Zionists both in Israel and throughout the world might
be in for a rather rude awakening sooner or later at some time in the future.

It is very presumptuous to believe that the Palestinians will accept
anything other than full control of all of the West Bank including removal of all
of the settlements and a return of all of their lands swallowed up by the
meandering Israeli ‘security’ wall and fence.

Israel is beginning to realise that worldwide support for the Palestinian
cause is growing rapidly and at the expense of support for Israel. People
around the world can now see through Israel’s lies and propaganda. The recent
wars against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s oppression of
Palestinians in the West Bank has shown the world that that real ‘terrorists’
all along have been the Israelis with their relentless bombardment and killings
of civilians of the Gaza Strip and their shootings of Palestinian protestors in
the West Bank. Israel’s credibility is crumbling rapidly and, in the end, it’s
likely to be the demands of the peoples of the world that will ultimately allow
the Palestinians to prevail in their quest for statehood – without conceding
any of their lands to the Israelis.

One would be extremely naïve to believe that Abbott has not already
been invited to participate in action against Islamic State forces in Iraq and
that invitation was made and accepted when US Secretary of State John Kerry and
Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel both visited Australia earlier this month. One
would also be extremely naïve to believe the outgoing director of the
Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) David
Irvine when he says that Australia’s involvement with the US in Iraq would
not further radicalise young Australian Muslims thereby increasing the likelihood
of terrorist acts being committed in Australia. Given the history of Australian
Muslims participation in the current war in Iraq, it is far more likely that
radicalised Muslims will consider committing terrorist acts in Australia when Abbott
does join with the US in the fight against Islamists in Iraq.

While as yet no scientific polls regarding Australians opinions about
going to war in Iraq again have been released, however, at least one online
poll shows that a strong majority, some 75% of Australians, would be against
any such action.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

In an extraordinary and surprising move, Netanyahu
has all but unilaterally agreed to a ceasefire in his war against the
Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. By ‘unilateral’ I mean without the
support of the extreme right–wing of his cabinet including Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett, Minister
of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovich and Minister of Communications Gilad
Erdan; all of whom were intent on destroying Hamas completely and fully
occupying the Gaza Strip permanently and ultimately annexing the territory to
Israel.

Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are, of course, delighted –
as is Abbas and the Palestine Authority, who are now enthusiastic about the
prospect of having a seaport and maybe even an airport with which to rebuild
their country.

But what happens when Netanyahu is gone and the real right-wing
Zionists who are in the ‘don’t care what the rest of the world thinks’ camp take
over?

The war against Hamas was extremely popular amongst Israelis who wholeheartedly
supported bombing the Gaza into submission with a view to full occupation. It
begs the question: What next? Will the extreme right bring Netanyahu down and
will they then renew hostilities by once more provoking the Palestinians in the
Gaza into launching more rockets into Israel by randomly shooting dead
Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank as they did to get this
latest round of carnage going?

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this is the end of it. I have no
idea what Netanyahu has in mind at this stage. I can only suggest that
Netanyahu, always sensitive to public opinion despite seemingly able to push
affairs right up to the very edge, has backed off due to overwhelming and
growing worldwide public support for the Palestinians; or possibly having been
threatened by the US who would support a push for the Palestinians to enjoin
the ICC if Netanyahu didn’t make peace.

Netanyahu may well have something else up his sleeve but, if he hasn’t,
then this could well be the beginning of the end for Netanyahu. And, if that
happens sooner rather than later, then it may be a case of ‘out of the frying
pan and into the fire’ for both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people
if the extreme right replace him.

Erdan also made it clear that Israel will not be conceding to any of
Hamas’s demands inferring that Israel had no even considered any of Hamas’s
demands which were put forward for discussion during the ceasefire.

Since it was obvious that Israel was never going to entertain any of
Hamas’s demands, Hamas had little choice other than to resume hostilities in
order to force the issue. The alternative would be to submit to eternal
ghettoisation, oppression and persecution at the hands of the Israelis. Both
sides now seem intent on pushing the matter to an ultimate conclusion once and
for all.

For the Israelis, the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and the transfer
of the population into the Sinai, Jordan or Lebanon have always been part of
the ultimate Zionist endgame. It has never been anything else. Talk of living
peacefully side by side with the Palestinians has only ever been an illusion
for the benefit of Israel’s Western supporters who continue to plough money
into Israel. But the reality is that Israel has never ever had any intention of
allowing a Palestinian state to exist. Israel has skilfully manipulated affairs
in such a way as to completely fool the West – and particularly the US – for
years into believing they only want peace with the Palestinians when all the
while they were merely waiting for an opportunity to grab the occupied
territories for themselves on the pretext of defending themselves against ‘terrorism’.

For the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip there is now little to
lose. They will likely fight on and they will pin their hopes on world opinion
and outrage against Israeli atrocities influencing the world’s Western leaders
into forcing the Israelis into stopping their war and accepting Hamas’s
demands.

Friday, August 22, 2014

ISIS, or just IS (Islamic State) as they now call themselves, as well
as al-Qaeda are, of course, Israel’s arch enemy – as well as much of the rest
of the world. But is Israel any better than their arch enemies when it comes to
committing crimes against humanity? And, just because Hamas also happens to be
an Islamic organisation, can it really be compared with IS or al-Qaeda?

Neocon propagandist Jonathan
Tobin, writing today in Commentary magazine, would have you believe
that Israel are, as usual, the victims, while Hamas and the other Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip fighting for their freedom are terrorists who need to be
treated with the same contempt as IS and al-Qaeda.

The reality, as anyone with even an iota of a sense of logic and compassion
can see, is that Israel that also behaves in such a way that the carnage and
death they bring to civilians in the Gaza Strip has the same result that the
carnage and death that IS and al-Qaeda bring down upon the peoples they choose
to ravage. The only difference between them is the weapons and methods they
choose to commit their crimes. IS and al-Qaeda us small arms and knives to kill
their victims whereas Israel use aircraft and tanks to pump bombs and shells
into their hapless victims.

Zionist propagandists and their neocon allies attempt to equate Hamas
with IS and al-Qaeda are plainly falling on deaf ears in the West as the
enormous protest rallies and marches in support of the Palestinian cause
demonstrate.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Natan Sharansky, an Israeli intellectual, extreme right-wing neocon Zionist
and ex-deputy prime minister of Israel, has written
an article published in the Washington Post in which he says: “The
pictures of destruction and mourning in Gaza that have filled media around the
world for the past several weeks have been very painful and sad to view. One
would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who does not sympathize with the
suffering of Gaza’s victims.”

Saturday, August 16, 2014

With more
American (and, one hopes, allied) eyes on the ground, it will be possible to
call in more air strikes with greater effectiveness, as occurred in Afghanistan
during the autumn of 2001. Western commandos such as Seal Team Six, Delta Force
and the British and Australian SAS should also expand operations to
carry out the kind of intelligence-driven leadership targeting that was an
important part of the 2007-2008 surge. (Bold is my emphasis.)

Max Boot has been around the traps for a very long time and has over
the years developed a strong network of US administration and defence
department insider sources so, when Boot writes that special forces – including
Australian SAS – should expand operations in Iraq, one wonders if Boot
hasn’t let the cat out of the bag by inferring that they should expand on the
numbers that are already there. Knowing the Abbott government’s propensity not
to ‘discuss military operational matters’, one shouldn’t be too surprised to
find that Australian SAS units may already be in Iraq.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

If either of Netanyahu’s right-wing political rivals for the Prime
Minister’s job had been leading Israel over this last year or so, what would be
the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank today?

A future potential Israeli leader is the extreme right-wing Naftali
Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home party which is devoted to creating a Greater
Israel that includes all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and excludes any
possibility of there ever being a Palestinian state. Bennett is currently Minister
of the Economy in Netanyahu’s cabinet.

Another contender is the even more extreme right-winger Avigdor
Liebermann, the controversial leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party
and currently Foreign Minister in the Israeli government. He is also a past
Deputy Prime Minister.

Had either of these two rivals of Netanyahu been Prime Minister of
Israel during the past year or so we would be looking at a vastly different Middle
East today.

During the recent conflict Liebermann
said that Israel will eventually need to reoccupy the Gaza Strip and ‘overthrow’
Hamas saying that “the occupation of Gaza and the overthrow of Hamas is a
process that would take more than four months”. Naftali, a little less brash
than Liebermann, nonetheless is adamant about obtaining a positive Israeli ‘victory’
over Hamas saying
that the Israelis should continue until the Gaza Strip is ‘demilitarised’,
a euphemism for occupation which is the only way Israel can ever hope to permanently
keep Hamas out of the Gaza Strip.

Both Liebermann and Bennett are strong Greater Israel Zionists and
support increasing settlements in the West Bank as well as building new ones in
the Gaza Strip with a view to eventually annexing both territories to Israel.

The difference between the Liebermann-Naftali attitude and Netanyahu’s
is that neither Liebermann nor Naftali make any secret about what they envisage
for the future of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Netanyahu on the other
hand, who actually wants the same thing, is far more politically pragmatic
about these issues given that, as prime minister, he needs to tread a fine line
between the reality of needing US support militarily and politically and
knowing that the US will not support an invasion and full occupation of the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In other words, Liebermann and Naftali are both
of the ‘We don’t care what the world thinks’ faction of Israel’s extreme
right-wing as opposed to Netanyahu who very much cares what the rest of the
world thinks of his actions because he needs to rely on their support for all
that he does.

Liebermann and Naftali, if they had their way, would simply go ahead
and fully occupy the territories at the slightest excuse, while Netanyahu will
only do so when he feels he has the US on his side and has a big enough casus
belli to do it.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Yesterday, regular readers may recall, I
wrote briefly about the psychopathy of Daniel Pipes and his ludicrous
beliefs relating to Hamas and its struggle against Israel’s attempts to destroy
the Gaza Strip. Today, it seems, that psychopathy is spreading among other
neoconservatives. Jonathan Tobin, writing
in Commentary magazine says:

As bad as the
situation there [the Gaza Strip] is, the Israelis have done their best to limit
their fire to those shooting at them. As is the case with all wars, including
those fought by the United States, sometimes mistakes happen and civilians
sometimes do get caught in the crossfire created by terrorists eager to turn
their neighbors into “martyrs.”

Tobin goes on to say:

Anyone who truly
cares about Gaza’s civilian population will draw the appropriate conclusions
and concentrate their criticisms on the terrorist group whose genocidal ideology
impels it to continue their war against Israel’s existence as long as there are
Palestinians left to be sacrificed.

Clearly, the neocons are getting desperate and have got together and
decided that the more gullible amongst those that read their rants may not recognise
the neoconservative’s psychopathy and actually accept their lunatic ravings at
face value. Little can be said about the state of mind of those that go along
with their nonsense.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

In his
latest piece published on the neoconservative online magazine National Review
Online, Daniel Pipes demonstrates the extent of his utter lunacy by writing:

Hamas’s greatest
strategic weapon in its effort to damage Israel’s reputation and ostracize it
was neither rockets nor tunnels but wrenching photographs of dead civilians
purportedly killed by the IDF.

This leads to the
bizarre situation in which Hamas seeks the destruction of Palestinian property,
compels civilians to sustain injuries and death, inflates casualty figures, and
may even intentionally attack its own territory — while the IDF takes
gratuitous fatalities to spare harm to Palestinians. The Israeli government
goes further, providing medical care and food and sending
technicians into harm’s way to make sure that Gazans continue to enjoy free
electricity.

I’m surprised that NRO even published this transparent piece of
absolute garbage that exposes Pipes to be nothing less than a raving
psychopath.

Seth Mandel, a neocon propagandist
writing for Commentary magazine, seems to think that Hamas has
overplayed its hand during the current crisis in the Gaza Strip. Mandel says “that
maybe the international community is so torn up by the violence in Gaza
that they want more than ever to prevent its recurrence. And no matter how
often they try to blame Israel, they seem to understand that there’s only one
way to prevent future bloodshed: demilitarize, at least to a significant
degree, the Gaza Strip”.

Looking at the demonstrations around the world, particularly the massive
display of solidarity from the South African people recently, most people
around the world, whilst agreeing that they want more than ever to prevent the
violence from reoccurring, would prefer that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
be given their freedom, and, if any one side needs disarming, it should be
Israel.

Mandel is delusional if he believes that the world supports what Israel
has in mind for the Gaza Strip.

Friday, August 08, 2014

It doesn’t look good for the people in the Gaza Strip. It’s unlikely
that the present ceasefire will hold long enough for there to be any meaningful
outcome for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis are demanding
the Palestinians disarm and the Palestinians flatly refuse to do so.

It is an all too familiar tactic that the Israelis have always employed
when dealing with the Palestinians whereby they make an unrealistic offer which
they know the Palestinians cannot possibly accept and then, when the
Palestinians reject the offer, the Israelis and their backers blame the
Palestinians for the breakdown in negotiations. The Israelis know full well
that Hamas and other Palestinian fighters will never give up their arms.

On the other hand, Netanyahu, with the backing of the Israeli people
and President Obama, are determined to destroy Hamas and all Palestinian
resistance. Netanyahu will likely blame the Palestinians for any continuation
of war after having refused to be demilitarised. The Israeli side, in turn,
will also refuse Palestinian demands to lift the blockade on the grounds that
lifting the blockade will allow Hamas and their allies to be rearmed.

The Palestinians want their own sovereign state free of any dominance
by Israel. The Palestinians want to be able to trade freely with whoever they
want. They want all of their lands back and the Israeli settlers gone. They
want free access between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. They want the
Israeli military cleared from the West Bank and Jordan border areas. They want
East Jerusalem as their capital. None of these demands, however, will ever be
acceptable to the Israeli right-wing.

In the Palestinians favour is support for the Palestinian cause from
the people of the world – especially after witnessing first hand the carnage
that Israel wreaked on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during this latest
round of fighting. Israel’s propaganda this time around has failed them.
Internet technology has exposed their propaganda to be just that – lies and
distortions of the truth. Israel has accused Hamas of using the Gazans as ‘human
shields’ because they launched their rockets and mortars from within civilian
areas when the reality is that there actually is nowhere else in the Gaza Strip
from which launch their armaments short of in the middle of an empty paddock
where they will be exposed to the enemy. No one is buying the ‘human shield’
nonsense anymore. No one is buying the Israeli garbage about Hamas bombing
their own hospitals and schools. No one really believes that Hamas have forced
civilians to stay in their homes after the Israeli have warned that they’ll be
bombed. No one believes anymore the transparent Israeli lie that they are only
targeting Hamas and other militants. Israel’s lies about how they conduct war
have been exposed.

So, what’s next?

Unfortunately, the Israelis haven’t achieved even their stated aims of
disarming Hamas and closing down all of the tunnels. And they certainly haven’t
got anywhere near their, until recently, unmentioned aim of destroying Hamas
completely, transferring
the Palestinian people out of the Gaza Strip and reoccupying it for
themselves with the eventual aim of annexing it into Israel.

At very best, the likely outcome will be either an extremely edgy and
prolonged ceasefire or a renewal of the bombing of the Gaza Strip followed by a
full-on invasion and occupation. In the event of a prolonged ceasefire, Israel
will likely provoke the Palestinians in much the same way as they did that
stared this round of violence; by randomly shooting civilians trying to work in
the fields close to the border. Once the Palestinians retaliate to the
shootings by launching rockets into Israel, Israel will then use this as an
excuse to launch their full-on offensive against the Gaza Strip.

In the end, either this time around or the next, the Israelis will eventually
attempt to gain the Gaza Strip for themselves using an irresistible force, and
the Palestinians will remain as difficult an object to move as they have
before. The only force that has any chance of dissuading the Israelis from
eventually taking the ultimate step to their goal is the power of public
opinion and a complete change in attitude from the US and their Western allies.

Monday, August 04, 2014

I have for these last ten years on this blog been writing that the
ultimate goal of right-wing Zionism has always been the creation of a Greater
Israel that would ultimately incorporate the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the
Golan Heights and even south Lebanon up to the Litani River if they thought
they could get away with it. I have written over the years that it has never
been the intention of Israel to allow any form of Palestinian state to exist. Talks
about a ‘two state solution’ and ‘Palestinian sovereignty’ have only ever been
conducted by Israel in order to appease the West, particularly the US, in order
to ensure the continuing flow of aid and support to Israel. There has been an
endless parade of ‘talks’ about ‘peace’ over the years. They have included the
Jarring Mission, the Rogers Plan, the Reagan Plan, the Oslo Accords, the Wye
River Memorandum, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Summit, the Elon Peace Plan,
the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement, the Arab Peace Initiative, the Road Map to
Peace, the Madrid Conference, the Hebron Protocol, the Annapolis Conference,
the Beirut Summit, the Peace Valley Plan, etc., all of which have been going on
for years and none of which – not one – have amounted to anything, and all the
time while these talks and negotiations have been going on, Israel has slowly
and insidiously permeated its way onto lands that do not belong to them.

Netanyahu is
playing his cards close to his chest. Despite some
95% of Israelis have succumbed to the relentless propaganda and who now support
the war against Hamas, and Obama conceding to Israeli requests for more
ammunition, Netanyahu is clearly not entirely convinced that America will
support an all-out push to finish off Hamas and is certainly not sure what the
world-wide repercussions would be if Israel were to reoccupy the Gaza Strip on
a permanent basis.

They’re not there yet, and I hope they never will, but the intent is
there as it always has been. For now, though, only time will tell what Netanyahu’s
up to.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Writing
in Commentary today, Israeli apologist and neocon propagandist
Jonathan Tobin said: “…the Netanyahu government decided to accede to the
[ceasefire] proposal put forward by the United States and the United Nations.
But that decision has been rendered moot by the decision of Hamas to use the
cover of the cease-fire to launch a suicide attack on Israeli forces that
led to the possible kidnapping of a soldier.”

Tobin forgets that it is the Israelis that have invaded the Gaza Strip
and that the Gaza people have a right at all times to defend themselves against
any aggression and also have the right, as do the Israelis, to take prisoners of
war.

Tobin argues that, rather than a truce, Israel should go all out to
destroy Hamas and demilitarise the Gaza Strip. To ‘demilitarise’ the Gaza Strip
will involve a prolonged occupation and who knows what horrors Tobin has in
mind when he says ‘Hamas should be destroyed’.

The US knows full well that the weapons and fuel they are supplying to
the Israelis is for the purpose of continuing to wage war against civilians.
They have no excuse. The US are fully aware that Israel are committing war
crimes yet the US continues to supply weapons which they know the Israelis are
more than likely to commit further war crimes with.

Why are the nations of the world not condemning the US for their
complicity in Israeli war crimes?

The Israelis have been in the habit of calling some Palestinian
families to warn them that their homes are about to be bombed. Most of these
homes are owned by civilians, most of whom have no connection to Hamas or any
other political or militant organisation.

Deliberately bombing civilians is a war crime but, by warning the
civilian occupiers that their homes are about to be destroyed, the Israelis
believe that it somehow absolves them of any crime. Furthermore, not only do
the Israelis think that it absolves them of crimes, but it also provides them
with an opportunity to then accuse Hamas of using civilians as ‘human shields’.

How would it be, one wonders, if an Hamas operative telephoned the
mayor of say Sderot and told him that the town hall was about to be bombed by
rockets but, due to the fact that they can’t guarantee the accuracy of the
rockets, it would be best if he evacuated the entire township within the next
ten minutes. And if the mayor then refuses to evacuate could he not then be
accused of using civilians as human shields?

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Whenever Israel has chosen to use aggression to intimidate its
neighbours in the West Bank, Lebanon or, as it is doing today, in the Gaza
Strip, it has always left itself wriggle room to back off when public opinion
and, more importantly, US and Western support seemed to be running against them.

It has done this by progressively escalating their assaults on their
enemies by pretending to be the victim when their enemies retaliate. That way
they can always tell the world via their well-oiled global propaganda machine
that they are merely responding to attacks being made against them by
‘terrorists that hate Jews’. They claim that they only want peace and that
their assaults against the Palestinians are purely defensive and designed to
deter attacks against them. They tell the world that their assaults are
designed to eliminate or minimise civilian deaths and injuries and are aimed
only at military targets. They claim that, when civilians are killed and wounded,
it is because the place where they have been killed or wounded was being used
by ‘terrorists’ who have deliberately used the civilians in the area as ‘human
shields’ in order to avoid having their weapon placements being hit.

However, when one delves into the histories of Israeli’s various
conflicts with their Palestinian and Arab neighbours, a different reality
emerges.

Rather than retaliating against rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters,
as is claimed in this latest round of extreme violence, Palestinian fighters in
the Gaza Strip were actually responding to shooting attacks against unarmed
Palestinian civilians by the Israelis who have used snipers to kill at least
five innocent Palestinian civilians, including a 58-year-old mentally ill woman
who had wandered too close to the border fence with Israel. More than 60 other
Palestinian civilians have also been wounded by Israeli snipers as they worked
in the fields near the border. These attacks against Gazan civilians have been
for the express purpose of goading the Palestinian fighters into retaliating by
firing rockets into Israel which, in turn, then provides Israel with an excuse
to attack the Gaza Strip on the pretext of stopping the rockets.

In the past when Israel has launched major attacks against Hamas,
Israel has always used the same tactic whereby they attack and keep attacking until
at some point world public opinion causes the Israelis to agree to a ceasefire.

But this time around, the circumstances of the fighting have provided
Israel with an opportunity to press on with the fight as they see the
possibility of actually realising their dream of retaking the Gaza Strip with
the ultimate aim of pushing out the Palestinians and reoccupying it and eventually
annexing it to Israel. There have been a number of factors that have produced
these circumstances. Firstly, while Netanyahu has always been sensitive to
public opinion, his government today has a number of senior ministers and
officials in it who are even more right-wing than he is. They are the ‘don’t
care what the rest of the world thinks’ faction of the Israeli government who are
quite openly advocating a full invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip and
the complete destruction of Hamas and their allies by either killing or
capturing all of them and/or forcing them to flee out of the Gaza Strip. This
would be the first step toward reoccupying the territory with Israeli civilians.
Secondly, Netanyahu’s aggressive stance this time around has very strong support among Israelis, 80% of
whom support his actions against the
Palestinians. Also working in Netanyahu’s favour is Hamas’s insistence that any
ceasefire will be accompanied by assurances that the Gaza Strip will have its
blockade against it lifted and that it will be able to trade freely with
Israel, Egypt and internationally via an internationally monitored seaport and
airport. Hamas is hoping that popular worldwide support for their demands will
persuade international leaders, especially in the US and Europe, to push Israel
for a ceasefire and an agreement that features Palestinian demands. Israel, on
the other hand, is looking for nothing less than the full destruction of Hamas
and has made it clear that they will not be acceding to Hamas’s conditions for
a ceasefire. Netanyahu will likely take full advantage of the unprecedented
support he has gained from the Israeli people.

During the course of this round of violence, Netanyahu has steadily
ramped up the assaults against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and
particularly on Gaza city itself and the surrounding neighbourhoods. The bombing
and shelling has become increasingly more indiscriminate with civilians being
deliberately targeted as they seek shelter in hospitals and schools after their
homes had been destroyed. Civilian infrastructure is also being increasingly
targeted as the recent destruction of the Gaza Strip’s only electric power
generating plant has demonstrated.

As the destruction of the Gaza Strip gathers pace the Israeli
propaganda machine has been hard at it spinning the increasingly most
outrageous and obviously transparent lies that would be laughable if not for
the tragedy they are attempting to cover up or blame others for. The Israelis
have even accused Hamas of bombing their own hospitals and schools and killing
their own children and other civilians in spite of independent witnesses
confirming that the Israelis were responsible for the death and destruction of
these people and facilities.

Netanyahu has stated that the Israeli Defence Forces will not rest
until every tunnel has been destroyed and all of the rockets found and
destroyed. In making such a statement and knowing that an operation of that
magnitude will likely take some considerable time, he has clearly indicated
that Israel has no intention of leaving the Gaza Strip anytime soon – if,
indeed, ever.

Netanyahu is very much aware of the world’s reaction to the onslaught
that is taking place in the Gaza Strip. He has seen the massive pro-Palestine
demonstrations that have taken place around the world and has heard the pleas
from world leaders and the United Nations to end the slaughter but he continues
to ignore them. He gets encouragement from the fact that the US, while calling
for Israel to enter a ceasefire agreement, at the same time stocks up Israel’s
diminishing munitions supplies as well as continuing to supply Israel with the
jet and diesel fuel needed by the Israelis to continue their attacks on the
Gaza Strip and the Gazan people.

Netanyahu thinks he’s on a roll this time around and, with the backing
of the majority of the Israeli people who have succumbed to the propaganda
behind him together with the support of the US, sees no reason to relent in his
aspirations to defeat Hamas and put the Gaza Strip under Israeli control. With
the destruction already wrought in the Gaza Strip coupled with domestic and US
support, Netanyahu may have convinced himself that he has gone beyond the point
of no return and may even believe that it is his manifest destiny to retake the
Gaza Strip and make it a part of Greater Israel once and for all.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Such is the small size of the Gaza Strip, together with the extremely
dense way the enclave is populated, and coupled with the devastating way the
Israelis have destroyed entire neighbourhoods including homes, hospitals,
schools, government buildings and infrastructure as well as the huge loss of
civilian life across much of the entire Strip, the Palestinians can be forgiven
for thinking that total war is being waged against them.

And, as the entire world can see in this day and age of social media,
total war, contrary to anything the Israeli propaganda machine is saying, is
indeed being waged against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

The only means by which the Palestinians can defend themselves is to
give the Israelis a dose of their own medicine by way of deterrence with
whatever meagre weaponry they have at their disposal which comes mainly in the
form of homemade rockets and mortars and lightweight firearms.

When total war is being waged against a people, the people are entitled
to defend themselves by whatever means is at their disposal. The ‘human shield’
meme that the Israelis and their Western supporters like to accuse Hamas of being
guilty of by virtue of defending themselves from within the midst of the
civilian population is hardly valid particularly when total war is being waged
around them and when there is no other place from which one can defend oneself
without exposing yourself to the enemy.

The Israeli
claim that their aim is simply to destroy Hamas rocket launching sites and the
tunnels is merely an excuse to wage total war against the Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip and to completely destroy the entire enclave and deprive the Palestinians
there of anywhere to live forcing them to seek refuge elsewhere. This will then
allow the Israeli to occupy most if not all of the Gaza Strip for the purpose
ultimately of annexing it to Israel and populating it with Israeli’s.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
in an interview on Sunday what his exit strategy from Gaza is,
Netanyahu replied: “Sustainable quiet. I
mean we didn't seek this escalation, Hamas forced it on us. They started
rocketing our cities, steadily increasing the fire”.

The implication here is clear. Netanyahu is saying that Hamas started
the present round of violence between the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and
Israel by lobbing rockets into Israel. The suggestion is that Hamas simply
started firing rockets into Israel in order to provoke the Israelis – for some
unexplained reason – into retaliation.

But this is not the case.

What Netanyahu – together with most of the Western media, conservative
commentariat and other assorted Israeli apologists – have forgotten to mention
is the months of indiscriminate shooting by IDF snipers of unarmed Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that preceded the current crisis.
Israel was not retaliating to unprovoked rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip
but, rather, the Palestinians in the Gaza were retaliating to deliberate
provocation by the Israelis who were murdering Palestinian civilians, one of
whom was a mentally ill woman shot dead by an Israeli sniper. Others were farm
and salvage workers who were in the open areas that were farmed and worked
close to the Israeli security fence.

Israel’s claim that Palestinians had started this round of violence is
a familiar refrain whenever there has been conflict between the two sides. However,
when one examines the chronology of events that has led up to these conflicts,
one finds that invariably it has been Israel that has been the provocateurs.

In just the first two months of 2014 alone, Human
Rights Watch have documented four killings of unarmed Palestinian civilians
by Israeli Defence Force snipers with another 60 having been wounded by
shooting by the IDF firing from the other side of the border fence into the
Gaza Strip. In order to deter the Israelis from shooting Palestinians in the
Gaza Strip and also to encourage the Israelis to lift their crippling blockade
of the enclave – which in itself is a form of provocation – Palestinian fighters
have launched rockets into Israel. It has been just the kind of response the
Israelis have been looking for as it provides them with an excuse to escalate by
bombing and rocketing Hamas targets inside the Gaza Strip.

This method of quiet provocation then retaliation followed by a disproportionate
counter-retaliation by the Israelis who would then claim to be the victims
follows a very familiar pattern for which Israel has a long history. It was
even used by the Israelis to kick start the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel
ultimately occupied the Syrian Heights, which they later illegally annexed and
renamed the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. History
would have us believe, at least according to the Israelis, that it was the Syrians
that started the 1967 war by lobbing artillery shells onto Israeli settlements
close to the demilitarised zone on the border between Syria and Israel at the
Syrian Heights. The reality, as General
Moshe Dayan later confided to a reporter, was something quite different. As
Dayan explained, it was the Israelis that deliberately provoked the Syrians by
pushing bulldozers up the hills into the demilitarised zones in order to get
the Syrians to open fire on them with their artillery pieces. This then
provided the Israelis with an excuse to counter-retaliate by firing on the
Syrian position using tank, artillery and aircraft. (1) As a result of these
actions, the situation eventually escalated and resulted in the Six Day War.

As well as the killings by the IDF of civilians in the Gaza Strip,
there have also been the killings of youths and children in the West Bank over
the past 19 months or so. Some had been involved in stone throwing though they
had never been any real threat to the heavily armed and protected Israeli
occupying forces, but most had not been involved in protests or stone throwing
at all and were innocent bystanders who were deliberately targeted by Israeli
snipers. Some 16 of these killings of Palestinians by the IDF during 2013
alone have been documented. There were also the filmed
killings of two youths shot by Israeli snipers on Nakba Day. Then there were
the killings
of several Palestinian
youths latter
when the Israeli occupying forces were searching for the kidnappers of the three
Israeli settler youths who were latter found murdered. Few of these events get
reported in the Western media but the Western media are quick to widely report
any retaliation from the Palestinians presenting such actions as being
unprovoked and therefore worthy of Israeli retribution as part of the Israeli
right to defend itself. Little, if anything, is ever said about the Palestinians
right to defend themselves.

Ever since the Israelis began taking lands from the Palestinians in
1947 until now they have always used provocation to justify their actions. The
Western world has generally ignored their blatant crimes and has rarely insisted
on the Israelis obeying the various UN resolutions that have been made against
them. Slowly, though, the peoples of the Western world are becoming more aware
of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and this is happening now
because the media moguls that have control over the mainstream media do not as
yet have control over the social media via the internet. While ordinary people
are able to voice their views to a far wider audience than ever they did before,
so the truth of what is really happening to the Palestinian people will be revealed.
It’s just a matter of time before the Zionist Israelis will eventually have to
answer for their crimes.

The world now knows exactly what the fascists of Israel are really up
to. It’s not about defending themselves, it’s about creating a Greater Israel
at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Search This Blog

Followers

About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.